Life Sciences Commons^™

Taxonomic Supplement (2001 To 2015) To The Catalogue Of New Zealand Carabidae (Insecta: Coleoptera), André Larochelle, Marie-Claude Larivière

Insecta Mundi

A supplement to the “Carabidae (Insecta: Coleoptera): catalogue” published by Larochelle and Larivière (2001; Fauna of New Zealand 43), is provided. A total of 99 genera and 547 species and subspecies belonging to 21 tribes and 8 subfamilies of Carabidae (including Cicindelini and Rhysodini), is recorded for New Zealand. Endemism is high, with 93% of the species and subspecies as well as 62% of the genera recorded from this country only. Changes to the 2001 catalogue are documented. The synonymy and type locality of taxa described between 2001 and 2015 are also provided.

Provisional Revision Of The Genus Epimelitta Bates, 1870 And Associated Genera, With A Brief Synopsis Of The Genus Acorethra Bates, 1873 (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae), Robin O.S. Clarke

Insecta Mundi

Abstract. Epimelitta Bates, 1870 (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae) is redescribed with two species: Epimelitta scoparia (Klug, 1825) and Epimelitta rufiventris Bates, 1870; Epimelitta meliponica Bates, 1870 syn. nov. and Epimelitta acutipennis Fisher, 1947 syn. nov. are considered junior synonyms of E. scoparia. Exepimelitta gen. nov. is described with five species: Exepimelitta mimica (Bates, 1873), Ex. nigerrima (Bates, 1892), Ex. consobrina (Melzer, 1931) (= Epimelitta nigerrima var. flavipubescens Fisher, 1947, syn. nov.), Ex. lestradei (Peñaherrera-Leiva and Tavakilian, 2003) and Ex. windsori sp. nov. Charisia Champion, 1892 is revalidated and redescribed with six species: Charisia euphrosyne (Newman, 1840), C. mneme (Newman, 1841), …

Perceptions Of Active Learning Between Faculty And Undergraduates: Differing Views Among Departments, Lorelei E. Patrick, Leigh Ann Howell, William Wischusen

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

There have been numerous calls recently to increase the use of active learning in university science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classrooms to more actively engage students and enhance student learning. However, few studies have investigated faculty and student perceptions regarding the effectiveness of active learning or the barriers to its implementation. Previous work surveying a single class in a single department has suggested that faculty and students have different perceptions of the effectiveness of active learning strategies and the barriers faculty face when implementing these teaching strategies. We expand on these previous findings by surveying a larger and more …

Ua12/2/1 Healthy Living Guide, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Special magazine published by the College Heights Herald.

• Collins, Emma. Six Ways to Learn Healthy Eating in Your Dorm
• Austin, Emma. Preston Health & Activities Center Accommodates Users of Varied Abilities
• Henderson, Andrew. If Five Campus Restaurants Had Personality Types
• Burgess, Kelly. How to Make a Light & Fresh Quinoa Fruit Salad
• Carlson, Kylie. New Boxing Gym Swings into Bowling Green – BGKY Boxing
• Adams, Julia. Students Open Discussion on Mental Health
• Healthier Eating with a Meal Plan
• Kast, Monica. Gluten & Allergy Free Station to Open in Fresh – Dining Services
• Sims, Adam. Students Develop Personal Workout Routines
• Cole, …

Discrimination Of Fast Click-Series Produced By Tagged Risso's Dolphins (Grampus Griseus) For Echolocation Or Communication, Stacy L. Deruiter, Alison K. Stimpert, S. Neves

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Early studies that categorized odontocete pulsed sounds had few means of discriminating signals used for biosonar-based foraging from those used forcommunication. This capability to identify the function of sounds is important for understanding and interpreting behavior; it is also essential for monitoring and mitigating potential disturbance from human activities. Archival tags were placed on free-ranging Grampus griseus to quantify and discriminate between pulsed sounds used for echolocation-based foraging and those used for communication. Two types of rapid click-series pulsed sounds, buzzes and burst pulses, were identified as produced by the tagged dolphins and classified using a Gaussian mixture model based …

Environmental Conditions Of 2 River Drainages Into The Northern Gulf Of Mexico During Successful Hatching Of Alabama Shad (Alosa Alabamae), Paul F. Mickle, Jacob F. Schaefer, Susan B. Adams, Brian R. Kreiser, William T. Slack

Faculty Publications

In recent years, the Alabama shad (Alosa alabamae) has experienced dramatic declines and extirpations from portions of its native range. Habitat degradation and barriers to migration are considered contributing factors to contraction in the distributional range this species. To identify conditions during successful spawning, river temperatures and discharges in 2 drainages of the northern Gulf of Mexico (the Apalachicola and Pascagoula rivers) were characterized during successful hatching “windows.” Sampling during 2005–2009 yielded 400 juvenile Alabama shad of which 261 were aged from counts of rings on sagittal otoliths. Results from logistic regression revealed that successful spawning coincided with increases in …

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Caused By Plasmodium Falciparum Infection, Erik Munson, Patricia G. Luedke, William D. Timm

Clinical Lab Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Mapping Spatial Distribution And Biomass Of Coastal Wetland Vegetation In Indonesian Papua By Combining Active And Passive Remotely Sensed Data, Aslan Aslan, Abdullah Rahman, Matthew W. Warren, Scott M. Robeson

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

There is ongoing interest to develop remote sensing methods for mapping and monitoring the spatial distribution and biomass of mangroves. In this study, we develop a suite of methods to evaluate the combination of Landsat-8, ALOS PALSAR, and SRTM data for mapping spatial distribution of mangrove composition, canopy height, and aboveground biomass in the wide intertidal zones and coastal plains of Mimika district, Papua, Indonesia. Image segmentation followed by visual interpretation of composite PALSAR images was used to delineate mangrove areas, whereas a flexible statistical rule based classification of spectral signatures from Landsat-8 images was used to classify mangrove associations. …

An Updated Mini Review Of Vitamin D And Obesity: Adipogenesis And Inflammation State, Zujaja Tul Noor Hamid Mehmood, Dimitrios Papandreou

All Works

© 2016 Zujaja-Tul-Noor Hamid Mehmood, Dimitrios Papandreou. Vitamin D related research continues to expand and theorise regarding its involvement in obesity, as both hypovitaminosis D and obesity strike in pandemic proportions. Vitamin D plays an important role in immune system through Vitamin D Receptors (VDR), which are transcription factors located abundantly in the body. Due to this characteristic, it is potentially linked to obesity, which is a state of inflammation involving the release of cytokines from adipose tissue, and exerting stress on other organs in a state of positive energy balance. Research trials in the past couple of years and …

Darwin’S Empirical Evidence, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Animal Sentience

Darwin’s extensive writings may seem antiquated to current thinkers with their predilections for cognitive science, neuroscience, and analytic branches of philosophy. He showed that morphologies are not simply taxonomic distinctions that allow classification into species. They describe living animals, hence morphologies-in-motion: animate forms of life engaged in synergies of meaningful movement, all of which are testimony to animal sentience.

Animal Personhood Is An Evolutionary Issue, James E. King

Animal Sentience

The Rowlands target article makes a case, based on John Locke’s metaphysical argument, that personhood can be applied to many species beyond a few nonhuman primates. The problem with this argument is that personhood has an open-ended list of defining attributes and can, at best only be partially applied to nonhuman species. Therefore, a dichotomous distinction cannot be made between qualifying and non-qualifying species. Instead, between-species comparisons must be based on observational and experimental procedures to demonstrate the extent to which human mental attributes are shared with other species. This would allow a more informed view about the appropriateness of …

Temporal Regularity Increases With Repertoire Complexity In The Australian Pied Butcherbird’S Song, Eathan Janney, Hollis Taylor, Constance Scharff, David Rothenberg, Lucas C. Parra, Ofer Tchernichovski

Publications and Research

Music maintains a characteristic balance between repetition and novelty. Here, we report a similar balance in singing performances of free-living Australian pied butcherbirds. Their songs include many phrase types. The more phrase types in a bird’s repertoire, the more diverse the singing performance can be. However, without sufficient temporal organization, avian listeners may find diverse singing performances difficult to perceive and memorize. We tested for a correlation between the complexity of song repertoire and the temporal regularity of singing performance. We found that different phrase types often share motifs (notes or stereotyped groups of notes). These shared motifs reappeared in …

Condition Of Larval Red Snapper (Lutjanus Campechanus) Relative To Environmental Variability And The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Frank J. Hernandez Jr., J.E. Filbrun, J. Fang, John Timothy Ransom

Faculty Publications

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill(DWHOS)spatially and temporally overlapped with the spawning of many fish species, including Red Snapper, one of the most economically important reef fish in the Gulf of Mexico. To investigate potential impacts of the DWHOS on larval Red Snapper, data from a long-term ichthyoplankton survey off the coast of Alabama were used to examine: (1)larval abundances among pre-impact (2007–2009), impact(2010), and post-impact (2011, 2013) periods; (2) proxies for larval condition (size-adjusted morphometric relationships and dry weight) among the same periods; and (3) the effects of background environmental variation on larval condition. We found that larval Red Snapper …

Comparative Analysis Of Linker Histone H1, Mecp2, And Hmgd1 On Nucleosome Stability And Target Site Accessibility, Caitlyn Riedmann, Yvonne N. Fondufe-Mittendorf

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Chromatin architectural proteins (CAPs) bind the entry/exit DNA of nucleosomes and linker DNA to form higher order chromatin structures with distinct transcriptional outcomes. How CAPs mediate nucleosome dynamics is not well understood. We hypothesize that CAPs regulate DNA target site accessibility through alteration of the rate of spontaneous dissociation of DNA from nucleosomes. We investigated the effects of histone H1, high mobility group D1 (HMGD1), and methyl CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2), on the biophysical properties of nucleosomes and chromatin. We show that MeCP2, like the repressive histone H1, traps the nucleosome in a more compact mononucleosome structure. Furthermore, histone …

Secondary Structure Adopted By The Gly-Gly-X Repetitive Regions Of Dragline Spider Silk, Geoffrey M. Gray, Arjan Van Der Vaart, Chengchen Guo, Justin A. Jones, David Onofrei, Brian R. Cherry, Randolph V. Lewis, Jeffery L. Yarger, Gregory P. Holland

Biology Faculty Publications

Solid-state NMR and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are presented to help elucidate the molecular secondary structure of poly(Gly-Gly-X), which is one of the most common structural repetitive motifs found in orb-weaving dragline spider silk proteins. The combination of NMR and computational experiments provides insight into the molecular secondary structure of poly(Gly-Gly-X) segments and provides further support that these regions are disordered and primarily non-β-sheet. Furthermore, the combination of NMR and MD simulations illustrate the possibility for several secondary structural elements in the poly(Gly-Gly-X) regions of dragline silks, including β-turns, 310-helicies, and coil structures with a negligible population of α-helix observed.

Convergence In Nitrogen Deposition And Cryptic Isotopic Variation Across Urban And Agricultural Valleys In Northern Utah, Steven J. Hall, E. M. Ogata, Samantha R. Weintraub, Michelle A. Baker, James R. Ehleringer, C I. Czimczik, David R. Bowling

Biology Faculty Publications

The extent to which atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition reflects land use differences and biogenic versus fossil fuel reactive N sources remains unclear yet represents a critical uncertainty in ecosystem N budgets. We compared N concentrations and isotopes in precipitation-event bulk (wet + dry) deposition across nearby valleys in northern Utah with contrasting land use (highly urban versus intensive agriculture/low-density urban). We predicted greater nitrate (NO3−) versus ammonium (NH4+) and higher δ15N of NO3− and NH4+ in urban valley sites. Contrary to expectations, annual N deposition (3.5–5.1 kg N ha−1 yr−1) and inorganic N concentrations were similar within and between valleys. …

A Gis Analysis Of Land Cover Effects On Water Systems: Nutrients And Algae In Stormwater Ponds, Nicole Lee Kappel

Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic land conversion is occurring rapidly and has the potential to impact our water quality. This study aims to explore the effect of watershed land characteristics on water quality within stormwater ponds (SWPs). Rapid land conversion is known to affect water quality of receiving water bodies, however not much is known about the effect of urbanization on SWPs. Geographic informational systems (GIS) was used to determine areas of land that drain into ponds. Water samples were collected and analyzed for total phosphorous, dissolved reactive phosphorous, nitrate, and ammonia. Algal pigment and percent cover measurements were taken in the field and …

Isoacceptor Specific Characterization Of Trna Aminoacylation And Misacylation In Vivo, Kyle Mohler, Rebecca Mann, Michael Ibba

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Amino acid misincorporation during protein synthesis occurs due to misacylation of tRNAs or defects in decoding at the ribosome. While misincorporation of amino acids has been observed in a variety of contexts, less work has been done to directly assess the extent to which specific tRNAs are misacylated in vivo, and the identity of the misacylated amino acid moiety. Here we describe tRNA isoacceptor specific aminoacylation profiling (ISAP), a method to identify and quantify the amino acids attached to a tRNA species in vivo. ISAP allows compilation of aminoacylation profiles for specific isoacceptors tRNAs. To demonstrate the efficacy and …

Another New Species Of Euscorpius Thorell, 1876 From The Taurus Mountains In Antalya Province, Southern Turkey (Scorpiones: Euscorpiidae), Gioele Tropea, Ersen Aydın Yağmur, Aristeidis Parmakelis, Kadir Boğaç Kunt

Euscorpius

A new scorpion species, Euscorpius alanyaensis sp. n., is described based on specimens collected from the Taurus Mountains in Antalya Province (Alanya District) in southern Turkey. It is a sibling species of the recently described E. gocmeni Tropea et al., 2014, and similarly, the new species is also characterized by a high trichobothrial count (Pv = 9–11, et = 7, em = 4, and eb = 4), a high pectinal teeth count (Dp = 9–11 in males, 8 in females), medium-small size, and light to medium brown-reddish colour. In addition, for the first time a phylogenetic …

Activation Of Nqo1 In Nqo1*2 Polymorphic Human Leukemic Hl-60 Cells By Diet-Derived Sulforaphane, Joseph M. Wu, Ardalan Oraee, Barbara B. Doonan, John T. Pinto, Tze-Chen Hsieh

NYMC Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: The NAD(P)H: quinone oxidoreductase (NQO1) confers protection against semiquinones and also elicits oxidative stress. The C609T polymorphism of the NQO1 gene, designated NQO1*2, significantly reduces its enzymatic activity due to rapid degradation of protein. Since down regulation of NQO1 mRNA expression correlates with increased susceptibility for developing different types of cancers, we investigated the link between leukemia and the NQO1*2 genotype by mining a web-based microarray dataset, ONCOMINE. Phytochemicals prevent DNA damage through activation of phase II detoxification enzymes including NQO1. Whether NQO1 expression/activity in leukemia cells that carry the labile NQO1*2 genotype can be induced by broccoli-derived phytochemical …

U.S. Drought Monitor, September 13, 2016, Eric Luebehusen

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for September 13, 2016 (9/13/16) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Exome Genotyping, Linkage Disequilibrium And Population Structure In Loblolly Pine (Pinus Taeda L.), Mengmeng Lu, Konstantin V. Krutovsky, Charles Dana Nelson, Tomasz E. Koralewski, Thomas D. Byram, Carol A. Loopstra

Forest Health Research and Education Center Faculty Publications

Background: Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) is one of the most widely planted and commercially important forest tree species in the USA and worldwide, and is an object of intense genomic research. However, whole genome resequencing in loblolly pine is hampered by its large size and complexity and a lack of a good reference. As a valid and more feasible alternative, entire exome sequencing was hence employed to identify the gene-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and to genotype the sampled trees.

Results: The exons were captured in the ADEPT2 association mapping population of 375 clonally-propagated loblolly pine trees using …

Plastid Osmotic Stress Influences Cell Differentiation At The Plant Shoot Apex, Margaret E. Wilson, Matthew Mixdorf, R Howard Berg, Elizabeth S. Haswell

Biology Faculty Research

The balance between proliferation and differentiation in the plant shoot apical meristem is controlled by regulatory loops involving the phytohormone cytokinin and stem cell identity genes. Concurrently, cellular differentiation in the developing shoot is coordinated with the environmental and developmental status of plastids within those cells. Here, we employ an Arabidopsis thaliana mutant exhibiting constitutive plastid osmotic stress to investigate the molecular and genetic pathways connecting plastid osmotic stress with cell differentiation at the shoot apex. msl2 msl3 mutants exhibit dramatically enlarged and deformed plastids in the shoot apical meristem, and develop a mass of callus tissue at the shoot …

De Novo Sequencing, Assembly And Analysis Of Eight Different Transcriptomes From The Malayan Pangolin, Aini Mohamed Yusoff, Tze King Tan, Ranjeev Hari, Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Wei Yee Wee, Agostinho Antunes, Frankie Thomas Sitam, Jeffrine Japning Rovie-Ryan, Kayal Vizi Karuppannan, Guat Jah Wong, Leonard Lipovich, Wesley C. Warren, Stephen J. O'Brien, Siew Woh Choo

Biology Faculty Articles

Pangolins are scale-covered mammals, containing eight endangered species. Maintaining pangolins in captivity is a significant challenge, in part because little is known about their genetics. Here we provide the first large-scale sequencing of the critically endangered Manis javanica transcriptomes from eight different organs using Illumina HiSeq technology, yielding ~75 Giga bases and 89,754 unigenes. We found some unigenes involved in the insect hormone biosynthesis pathway and also 747 lipids metabolism-related unigenes that may be insightful to understand the lipid metabolism system in pangolins. Comparative analysis between M. javanica and other mammals revealed many pangolin-specific genes significantly over-represented in stress-related processes, …

Maintenance Of Transcription-Translation Coupling By Elongation Factor P, Sara Elgamal, Irina Artsimovitch, Michael Ibba

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Under conditions of tight coupling between translation and transcription, the ribosome enables synthesis of full-length mRNAs by preventing both formation of intrinsic terminator hairpins and loading of the transcription termination factor Rho. While previous studies have focused on transcription factors, we investigated the role of Escherichia coli elongation factor P (EF-P), an elongation factor required for efficient translation of mRNAs containing consecutive proline codons, in maintaining coupled translation and transcription. In the absence of EF-P, the presence of Rho utilization (rut) sites led to an ~30-fold decrease in translation of polyproline-encoding mRNAs. Coexpression of the Rho inhibitor Psu …

How Could Consciousness Emerge From Adaptive Functioning?, Max Velmans

Animal Sentience

The sudden appearance of consciousness that Reber posits in creatures with flexible cell walls and motility rather than non-flexible cells walls and no motility involves an evolutionary discontinuity. This kind of “miracle” is required by all “discontinuity” theories of consciousness. To avoid miraculous emergence, one may need to consider continuity theories, which accept that different forms of consciousness and material functioning co-evolve but assume the existence of consciousness to be primal in the way that matter and energy are assumed to be primal in physics.

The Farm Newsletter, Usu Student Organic Farm

USU Student Organic Farm Newsletter

Here at the farm we are about as anxious for the tomatoes to ripen as people can be. However, they just don't seem to be picking up the color that they should be at this point. One method for getting tomatoes to ripen is to cut them off the plant in bunches with some of the stem still attached and to let them sit/hang in a warm place out of direct sunlight. This should ripen them in about a week's time. We are going to try this with a few of our many many green tomatoes in the hope that …

Parallel Mutations Result In A Wide Range Of Cooperation And Community Consequences In A Two-Species Bacterial Consortium, Sarah Douglas, Lon Chubiz, William Harcombe, F. Ytreberg, Christopher Marx

Biology Department Faculty Works

Multi-species microbial communities play a critical role in human health, industry, and waste remediation. Recently, the evolution of synthetic consortia in the laboratory has enabled adaptation to be addressed in the context of interacting species. Using an engineered bacterial consortium, we repeatedly evolved cooperative genotypes and examined both the predictability of evolution and the phenotypes that determine community dynamics. Eight Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium strains evolved methionine excretion sufficient to support growth of an Escherichia coli methionine auxotroph, from whom they required excreted growth substrates. Non-synonymous mutations in metA, encoding homoserine trans-succinylase (HTS), were detected in each evolved S. enterica …

Marginal Beta Probability Density Functions For Predator-Prey Diet Linkages For The Gulf Of Mexico Fitted Using Maximum Likelihood Method, April 2013-May 2015, Cameron Ainsworth

C-IMAGE data

This is a dataset of the marginal beta probability density functions (PDFs) representing the percent contribution of prey to predator diet. Predator and prey are provided at the level of functional groups, where functional groups correspond to those used in an Atlantis biogeochemical ecosystem model of the Gulf of Mexico published by Ainsworth et al. 2015 (NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-SEFSC-676). The PDFs have been provided in a CSV file, and also graphically (Fig1.tif, Fig2.tif, Fig3.tif, Fig4.tif). This data set only deals with predator groups that are fish. Note that this data is also provided in a summarized form (mode and …

Nmr And Structural Data For Connexin 32 And Connexin 26 N-Terminal Peptides, Yuskel Batir, Thaddeus A. Bargiello, Terry L. Dowd

Publications and Research

In this article we present 1H and 13C chemical shift assignments, secondary structural propensity data and normalized temperature coefficient data for N-terminal peptides of Connexin 26(Cx26), Cx26G12R and Cx32G12R mutants seen in syndromic deafness and Charcot Marie Tooth Disease respectively, published in “Structural Studies of N-Terminal Mutants of Connexin 26 and Connexin 32 Using 1HNMR Spectroscopy” (Y.Batir,T.A.Bargiello,T.L.Dowd, 2016)[1]. The mutation G12R affects thestructure of both Cx26 and Cx32 peptides differently. We present data from secondary structure propensity chemical shift analysis which calculates a secondary structurepropensity (SSP) score for both disordered or folded peptides and proteins using the difference between the …